We’ve seen a lot of bad polling for Joe Biden.
It stands to reason that he isn’t doing well with Republicans. But he’s also not doing well across the board with a variety of other groups including independents and Hispanics.
But when he’s also facing trouble in the progressive polls, too, you know it’s bad. Now, part of that is that Joe Biden has promised a lot and then delivered a whole lot of nothing. So, even some on the left are not happy right now. We see that in reactions to things like the failure to pass the Build Back Better bill and against the CDC guidance to shorten the isolation time on people who test positive for COVID.
But the 37 percent approval rating in the Civiqs’ poll — a progressive poll — is bad. It’s worse than the Real Clear Politics average which was already bad enough at 43 percent approval to 54 percent disapproval, and the Trafalgar Group poll that has him at 40.4 approval and 55.9 disapproval; although, the fact that they are so low, too, tends to indicate that Civiqs isn’t an outlier, that it’s on-trend.
In contrast, Civiqs delivers demographics by the barrel, and … few of them give Biden or Democrats in general any reason to celebrate. The split among independents is actually worse in this poll, 26/63, for a gap of thirty-seven points rather than thirteen among indies. Unlike other recent polling, Biden’s ahead with Hispanics but only 50/39, and only 65% of black voters approve of his job performance. Biden is underwater in almost every other Civiqs demo, even among 18-34YOs (29/55!), post-graduates (42/49), and even women (41/48). For the first time in a long while, a consensus has formed between college graduates (37/55) and non-college graduates (36/55).
It’s gotten worse since we last checked in on the poll. In October, they had only 10 states that were overwater approving of Biden. That was bad enough. But now it’s only five as of today, which means they went underwater and lost five states since then. The ones that are not underwater are California, Hawaii, Vermont, Maryland, and Massachusetts. That’s pretty shocking, if true, and just complete quicksand for him.
California, which went big for Biden just a year ago at 64-34, now has him at just 46 approval to 43 disapproval — more or less even. It also means passing the infrastructure bill didn’t help Biden at all. Indeed, given that he didn’t pass Build Back Better, all the back on forth on the issue might have hurt him with multiple groups including the folks on the left mad that it didn’t pass — and the folks on the right mad that it was even proposed.
So in a situation where, to have any hope at all in the mid-terms that are shaping up to be a tidal wave of a debacle against the Democrats, you would need to whip up the base as much as you can. Instead, you have a base that is seriously unhappy with Biden, at the same time everyone else can’t stand him either. That’s looking very bad for the chances for Biden and the Democrats. But Joe being Joe — he always seems to be able to find a way to go lower. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if we came back in a month and he’d lost more states.